Weekly Highlights, April 22-27

Weekly Highlights:

April 22: Check out the Green Team on Nickelodeon:
http://www.nick.com/videos/clip/earth-day-2012-tbh-shout-out-bottle-caps-N14911-03.html?xid=STF-LinkFromEmail

April 23: Career Week Begins!  Welcome Mr. Derrenbacher
April 24: Welcome Mr. Ehrenfried & Mr. Wolf
April 24: Math 4 Review Packet Due
April 25 & 27: Math 4 Unit Test
April 26: Take Your Child To Work Day (please send in a note in advance if your child will not be attending school on Thursday)
April 26: Welcome Mrs. Wissink, Mr. Pera, & Mrs. McIntosh-Little
April 27: Welcome Mr. Ibrahim


*Mrs. Sagona has challenged the school to read 1 million minutes by May 15. If the students and teachers reach the goal, each class will earn an ice cream party and an additional recess. Students should continue to read each night for 20 minutes (at least) and record this information on their reading logs. We continue to record the minutes we read each day in school on the log as well.

In March, Ms. Hudson's reading class read 50,285 minutes. In Feburary, we read 40,950 minutes. That's an increase of 9,335 minutes in ONE MONTH! I am so proud of the job we are doing. Keep up the great work!


Math 5:

During Unit 5 we will cover the following topics:
• Geometry: Identify transformations in tessellations
• Measurement: Select appropriate measurement attributes, tools and units to solve problems
• Estimate and determine the perimeter and area of a closed figure
• Develop and use formulas to determine the volume of a rectangular prism

Mr. Beddick's class is working on volume and capacity
Mrs. Dynda's class is working on working on surface area, volume.  We will combine perimeter, area & volume to identify the relationship between the three attributes. 


Math 4:
Mathematics is the study of patterns and relationships. In this unit, students explore the patterns that exist in the multiplication and division of multi-digit numbers and within the measurement system for time.



THIS WEEK:
The review packet is due on April 24. Our unit test will take place on April 25 & April 27. April 26 is Take Your Daughter/Son to Work Day.

http://www.multiplication.com/

A great website that allows students to work at their own pace on word problems/real world application of multiplication & divsion:

http://www.thinkingblocks.com/

We continue to use the Khan academy website to help practice our math at home. This is a great site where students (if a login is created) can track their progress and have example problems to work on. It has been featured in CNN as an up and coming way for teachers to assess individual students learning.

http://www.khanacademy.org/


Science: Distinguishing Between Rocks and Minerals
This week we will identify components of a variety of rocks and compare the physical properties of rocks with physical properties of minerals to identify major differences.
Using our "model" rocks, we will discover that a rock is made up of many different materials that can be separated but a mineral is made up of one material.
We will observe and test minerals based on physical properties:
*Color
*Luster
*Hardness
*Streak



Reading:
Our stratgey focus this week is making inferences. When you infer, you go beyond the surface details to see other meanings the details suggest or imply but are not stated in the text. Inferences can be found in four main ways:

dialogue between characters
actions of characters
physical descriptions of characters
inner thoughts of characters (not spoken in dialogue)


READING HOMEWORK: Students are asked to read 20 minutes each night at home and record on their reading log. This is an independent book of their choosing. Our book talk will be due Friday, April 27. Students should complete the Book Talk paper and be prepared to discuss something they read in class every Friday.  Some students have an autobiography reading assignment instead of the Book Talk


Writing:
This week will begin to prewrite about a quarter 4 writing project. We will brainstorm things we know about, things we are interested in, things we have questions about to determine the "what" and "how" of our next project.

All students in Ms. Cooper & Mrs. Dynda's classes are going to be writing an autobiography. Students in Ms. Hudson's class are going to continue writing their own projects. Students in the OSS reading group will be required to complete an autobiography. We are introducing a new computer program we have called "Classroom Suite" where students will be able to choose from various formats, include video, text, and graphics. More details will be coming soon.

A link to a website for additional information on the 6 Traits is below:
http://www.edina.k12.mn.us/concord/teacherlinks/sixtraits/sixtraits.htm



Spelling:
Sort 20 will focus on vowel alteration, how word sounds change when you compare root words with long vowels to words that have short vowels or schwa sounds. We will discover by sound exploration that not all root words are long vowels and not all derrivatives are short vowels. Our spelling test for this sort will be on FRIDAY, May 4.
The spelling activities that we suggested in the students spelling journals are just suggestions. Please feel free to adapt as your child needs to.